Letter to Theresa by Chris Marker Behind the Veils of Sans Soleil

August 19 Year: Unknown

Original: Fax

Dear Theresa (and all the gang),

Dont apologize: perhaps one thousand people wished to ask me these questions, but I
never gave them a chance to ask. In fact, the only opportunity where I was in a position
to talk about Sans Soleil (I note that, in spite of me putting in the film itself the three
titles of the Mussorgsky songs cycle, in Russian , in English SUNLESS and
in french, people in US always preferred to use the latest so in turn one question from
me: how come ? does it sound that exotic ?) was at the San Francisco Festival, after the
screening, but I managed to brush aside too direct questions. Nothing nasty, just the
deliberate intention to leave the film in a mist, in order that viewers let their imaginary
forces work as the Chorus says in Henry V. Now perhaps its about time to bring some
clues, and anyway all this will remain between us, wont it?
The. only question I confess being unable to cope with is your last: Why? If I knew (if
we knew) why things are done, this world would look quite different. Ill just try to deal
with the How ? And for that, the best is perhaps to give you an account of events,
starting with the films release. First, the text I distributed to the press and
professionals :

THE STORY
An unknown woman reads and comments upon the letters she receives from a friend
a free-lance cameraman who travels around the world and is particularly attached to
those two extreme poles of survival, Japan and Africa (represented here by two of its
poorest and most forgotten countries, even though they played a historical role : Guinea
Bissau and the Cape-Verde Islands). The cameraman wonders (as cameramen do, at
least those you see in movies) about the meaning of this representation of the world of
which he is the instrument, and about the role of the memory he helps create; A
Japanese pal of his, who clearly has some bats in the belfry (japanese bats, in the form
of electrons) gives his answer by attacking the images of memory, by breaking them up
on the synthesizer. A filmmaker grabs hold of this situation and makes a film of it, but
rather than present the characters and show their relationships, real or supposed, he
prefers to put forward the elements of the dossier in the fashion of a musical
composition, with recurrent themes, counterpoints and mirror-like fugues: the letters, the
comments, the images gathered, the images created, together with some images
borrowed, In this way, out of these juxtaposed memories is born a fictional memory, and
in the same way as Lucy puts up a sign to indicate that the Doctor is in, wed like to
preface this film with a placard: Fiction is out somewhere.
Then followed detailed biographies of the protagonists -Sandor Krasna, cameraman,
born in Kolozsvar, Hungary, in 1932, doing his first short film (Erdlyi Tncok) at the
Budapest Film School, fleeing Hungary in 1956 for Vienna first, then Paris and USA,
and finally settling in Japan. Michel Krasna, his younger brother (Budapest, 1946),
studying music at the Kodaly schools, joining Sandor in California but finally choosing
Paris to compose film music Hayao Yamaneko, the video-artist (born Nagoya, 1948),
art activist during the Sixties, learning film and electronics at the Nihon Taigaku in Tokyo,
artist in residence in Berkeley after his short Boku no shi wo kimeta noha dareka? -and
Chris Marker, amateur filmmaker. It was in Berkeley at PFA, to be precise that
Krasna, Yamaneko and Marker met (said the blurb) and from then on the Sans Soleil
project originated.
So the scene was set to create. confusion, and reactions were interestingly chaotic. I
knew some people wouldnt pay attention : they see a movie, they dont care about who
did what. Others, more familiar with my works, would identify my style in the letters and
assume I had done the principal photography (you girls shouldnt ask if I shot all of the
footage : the final credits are quite clear for attributing at least what I didnt shoot).
But I was aiming at the center of the target : people unfamiliar enough not to take for
granted that I was the unique author, and yet clever and curious enough to raise
questions about letters and shooting. You proved you belong to that category. So I
guess its only fair to give you a honest answer : yes, all four characters, even the
fourth, amount to be just one, namely your humble servant. But you shouldnt think all
that was just a game, or a series of private jokes. I had good reasons or so I thought
to devise that crooked set-up. Here they are :
For Michel Krasna the musician, a simple case of good manners. I hate seeing one
name more than once on the credits (you know a picture by Jonathan Rumble.fish,
after an idea by Jonathan Rumblefish, scenario and dialog by Jonathan Rumblefish,
edited by Jonathan Rumblefish, etc, I see it as extremely pedestrian. So even if I
frequently do my own music, I would have felt preposterous to sign it along my directors
credits. So I invented Michel, and I established a parental link with Sandor in order to
give more flesh to the parallel story.
Hayao Yamaneko was more meaningful. I was very conscious of the limitations that
plagued the first image synthesizers, and inserting these images in the editing, like that,
could create some misunderstanding, as if I boasted this is modernity when those
were the first stumbling steps on the long road that would lead to the computerized and
virtual world. I just wanted to stress the point that such images were possible, and
would change our perception of the visual in which I wasnt totally wrong. So I thought
of a fictional character, Hayao Yamaneko, technaholic and treated with some irony, to
deliver the message. without solemnity. Naturally again those who knew something
about Japan and myself, as yamaneko means wildcat, could have suspected
something, er fishy, but most people didnt. I even had some small gratifications about
both my characters, when folks congratulated me for using Michel Krasnas music
someone they had spotted since long and some others remembering clearly having
seen Hayaos works in Japan. Such anecdotes make my week.
As for Sandor Krasna, I suppose you caught the idea, which was to use some degree of
fiction to add a layer of poetry to the factuality of the so-called documentary. From the
start I had always refused the omniscient, anonymous voice of the classical
travelogue, and I had bluntly used the first-person. For that I was sometimes
reproached, accused of pretension. I sincerely think thats wrong. If you allow me to
quote myself, this is how I put it (in Level Fives pressbook) in an interview with Dolores
Walfisch for the Berkeley Lantern (the what ? Come on, now I guess youre familiar with
my fantasies) I use what I have got. Contrarily to what people say, the use of the first
person in films tends to be a sign of humility: all I have to offer is myself. Also I loved
the form of the letter, for the freedom and flexibility it allows. Letter from Siberia was a
real letter, addressed to a real person. But I didnt wish to lock myself in such a system,
and I came to consider that a fictional character could bring a more interesting
dimension. Then the idea of having another voice, that of the addressee, establishing a
new distance. The audience would be free to imagine whatever they wanted between
those two, in a more creative way than if I had told their story myself. And funnily the
real starter was grammatical, when I realized that I would rather use the past tense
instead of the present. He writes me He writes me didnt give me the rhythm I
longed for. When I phrased for the first time He wrote me the last obstacle fell, and
the text came fluently, leaving me the luxury to turn back to the present tense at the very
last paragraph of the film, thus establishing a new frontier in time, and the possibility for
the viewer (or rather then for the listener) to identify differently with the Voice, itself from
then on provided with a future : Will there be a last letter? (With Level Five, I went one.
step further, by establishing the physical presence of one of the correspondents, the
woman, but this time shes the one who writes and myself as the exterior witness.
Im not sure that I was fully understood.)
I dont know if this answers really your questions, but at least you have an idea of the
process. On a more matter-of-fact level, I could tell you that the film intended to be, and
is nothing more than a home movie. I really think that my main talent has been to find
people to pay for my home movies. Were I born rich, I guess I would have made more
or less the same films, at least the traveling kind, but nobody would have heard of them
except my friends and visitors. Camera was a little 16mm Beaulieu with 100 feet reels,
silent (which means noisy) the sound was made separately on one of the first small
cassette recorders (not yet the Walkman), there isnt one synch take in Sans Soleil. I
was naturally alone from beginning to end, but with some exceptions thats my usual
way to work. I couldnt find the words to explain to an editor, for instance, operations
that come instinctively to my mind when Im at the editing table. The 16mm editing was
transferred on 35mil for theater release. The shooting extended from 1978 to 1981,
following haphazardly my alternate trips to Japan and Bissau (where I helped to build a
cinema/video training center whose results were utterly destroyed this year by the civil
war there, but thats another story) and I couldnt tell at what moment these bits and
pieces started to shape up into a real movie, that also belongs to the mysteries of
existence.
Oh, and did the film change me ? Well, perhaps you remember the moment when I
mention the Year of the Dog. I was just sixty then, which means that the different
combinations between the twelve animals of the year and the four elements have been
exhausted, and youre in for a brand new life. I didnt realize that when I began, but at
that moment I understood that the whole film was a kind of exorcism for sixty years on
this dubious planet, and a way to take leave of them. You could call that a change.

Chris Marker c/o KMS 5 rue Courat 75020 PARlS Fax (331) 4009 9525 [email address
redacted ed]

Thanks to Emiko Omori for sending this wonderful document. Though it pulls back the
curtain on some of the mysteries of Sans Soleil, I felt it ultimately too compelling and
could not refrain from reproducing it here, for which I take the blame. blind librarian